The last time the Yankees needed to rely so heavily on rookie starters they could blame a world at war. In peacetime, they have not needed so many inexperienced arms so often since they were still the Highlanders.

This time all it has taken is an unqualified strength and conditioning coordinator plus the kind of misfortune and mismanagement that sent the Titanic from luxury craft to the bottom of the ocean.

“We are in very unusual circumstances,” Andy Pettitte said.

Unusual. Uncharted. Unreal. The team that spends the most money on veterans already has a season on the brink because of a dependence on what essentially should be the Scranton Wilkes-Barre rotation. Seventeen rookies have started multiple games this season in the majors and, amazingly, five (Kei Igawa, Darrell Rasner, Phil Hughes, Jeff Karstens and Chase Wright) have been Yankees. Houston (Chris Sampson and Matt Albers) is the only other team to start even two rookies multiple times.

The Yanks last started five rookies (Bill Bevens, Monk Dubiel, Joe Page, Mel Queen Sr. and Steve Roser) multiple times in 1944, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. But that was due to World War II. Spud Chandler, who had won 20 games the year before on the championship Yankees, Red Ruffing and Marius Russo were all called into the service and started one game between them. You would have to go back to 1910 to find the previous time the franchise was forced to use five rookies for multiple starts. Tomorrow Matt DeSalvo will become the sixth Yankee rookie starter this season. The last time they used six for one or more starts was 1959 (Gary Blaylock, Jim Bronstad, Jim Coates, Mark Freeman, John Gabler and Eli Grba) when the team was wiped out by health problems. DeSalvo will be the 10th starter they use this year, a major league record for 30 games into a season.